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Professor: Cain, M.
Phone: (808) 956-2705
Fax: (808) 956-5908

Matthew F. Cain

Associate Professor

Matt was born and raised in Congers, NY, a small hamlet located about 30 miles northwest of New York City. He graduated from SUNY Geneseo in 2007 with a B.S. in Chemistry where he got his taste for research working in the laboratory of Dave Geiger. Unwilling to sacrifice his love of skiing for graduate school, he moved to Hanover, NH in July 2007 to pursue his doctoral studies at Dartmouth College under the tutelage of Dave Glueck. His Ph.D. thesis was entitled “Cu(I)-Catalyzed P-C Bond Formation and the Synthesis of C3- and C1-Symmetric P-Stereogenic Triphosphine Ligands”. The research relied heavily on Schlenk techniques and glove box manipulations – skills he hopes to extend to the members of his research group; in addition, he learned the beauty of the Kugelrohr and its unwavering ability to make phosphine purification possible. Continuing his northeast tour, he moved to MIT in January 2012 to work on the design of new TREN-based macrocyclic ligands for Mo-catalyzed N2 reduction with Dick Schrock. At MIT, his knowledge of metathesis and early metal complexes expanded greatly, but perhaps, the most important lesson learned was to never stop being competitive and always strive for greatness. Matt joined the Chemistry Department at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in the summer of 2014 and looks forward to making an impact in both teaching and research.

 

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